Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (18 page)

Being no backward lover, he came in person. It made him feel adventurous and young. There were a dozen good reasons why he might choose to ride to Hever any fine morning to see his household Comptroller, without setting people talking. Sir Thomas Boleyn had always been accommodating, and this time Henry caught Anne unawares.

She did not hear him pull aside the door arras. She looked up from her book and saw him standing there, and knew by the lustful look in his eyes that he must have been watching her for some minutes. Like a stoat before it strikes, she thought.

Her heart missed a beat as she rose. She laid aside the leather-bound poems to curtsy. She had not meant to be caught like this, with not so much as a servant about; but she would be no silly, fascinated rabbit for his kill.

She was so graceful in every movement, and he so susceptible and self-assured.

“What are you reading this sunny forenoon, Mistress Anne?” he asked, in that mellow voice of his.

His air of gallantry made her nervous. Because she was not too sure of controlling her own voice, she held out the book to him respectfully. He came and took it from her, turning over the fine, illuminated pages with appreciative fingers. Seeing the title, his sandy brows shot up in surprised amusement. “‘Troilus and Criseyde?’ Strong meat for a virgin, isn’t it?”

“I like it,” said Anne.

“So do I,” he chuckled. “Do you know those words at the end of this lovely verse?

‘—my royal estate here I resign

Into her hand, and with full humble cheer

Become her man, as to my lady dear’?”

With the closed book in his hands and his quizzing, libidinous eyes on her face, he quoted them softly. Too softly.

Furious with herself for providing the trap, Anne felt herself flushing like any simpering chamber wench. But she would not let him discompose her. “Sir Thomas More considers them fine poetry,” she said, holding her dark head proudly.

“He is right. And I should like to set them to music and hear you sing them.” Responding at once to the dignity of her breeding, he ceased to ogle her. He laid aside the book and sat down on a curved music stool beside her. “It is high time we had you back at Court, adding your beauty and accomplishments to your brother’s beguiling levity,” he invited.

Anne’s lips set themselves into a rigid line. “With so many matters of real import to think upon, your Grace could scarcely be aware that I have been grievously sick,” she said frigidly.

“Could I not?” he chaffed. “Have I not those about me who are nearest to you in blood? And do you suppose that I have never enquired for your health?”

His reproachful sincerity made her feel a clumsy ingrate. “Your Majesty is magnanimous,” she murmured.

“Not magnanimous, and you know it,” he contradicted brusquely. “I have missed you, Nan.”

She looked up in genuine surprise. “Yet you dismissed me.” She would have added “without good reason” had she dared.

“Was it not best for a time?”

His words seemed to imply some interrupted understanding between them, which Anne resented. But she knew that it had been best. Even had she not been ill, she could not have lived at Court away from the kindness of Jocunda, through the desolation of these past months.

“And now you will come back,” Henry was saying pleasantly. He rose and wandered to an open window, admiring an enchanting vista of trees and lawns. His words were less a question than a command.

Anne rose meekly, since she could not sit while he stood. “I am still not strong,” she prevaricated stubbornly.

He swung round with a flurry of jewelled velvet. Masterfully, standing close before her, he put out a hand and lifted her small, pointed chin the better to examine her face. “Still resentful, you mean, my jade!” he corrected her, with a short, brutal laugh. “What did you expect me to do? Stand aside and let any hot-blooded young redhead fondle you first, once I had marked you for my own?”

Agonizingly, his words brought it all back. The silks and scents, the sunny lawn, young Mary Tudor’s voice, the warm strength of her lover’s arms. Anne felt like a half-broken filly, kicking furiously against a master who knows every trick of the animal he handles. Nothing, nothing would make her obey him. “Since for no fault the Queen gave me my
congé
—” she began.

But he only grinned. “You need bear no resentment against my wife. I make no doubt she was glad to see the back of you, but it was I who told her to send you packing.”

Anne’s dark eyes glared back hatingly into his amused light ones. She knew that he was enjoying himself immensely. “Well, what do you say now, my beauty?” he asked more gently, bending to taste her parted lips with an experimental kiss.

“That her Grace may not want me back,” argued Anne, still forcing herself to defiance although her limbs were as water.

“She may not want you, but she shall send for you. And soon.”

Anne’s breath was coming short and fast. It was not fair, being held so close to him. Between anger and desperation, she felt a sob catch painfully in her throat. “I still need my stepmother,” she protested faintly.

Seeing her genuinely distressed, Henry let her go. He stood for a while by her music table, fingering the fine lute and rebec she had brought from France. And Anne, struggling in a welter of conflicting emotions, stood staring at his broad shoulders and the back of his ruddy, close-cropped head. She waited with her left hand hidden in her sleeve and her right hand pressed to her slender neck, as she so often did in moments of stress. But for once, it seemed he was not really concerned with the rare instruments he handled, and by the time he turned back to her all trace of mockery and mastery was gone. “Listen, Nan,” he said, his voice husky with earnestness. “I care not how or with whom you come, so be it you come. You have my leave to bring Lady Boleyn an’ you will. I am a lonely man these days, and have need of you.”

They stood measuring each other like two protagonists about to enter the ring, and presently the fine, high moulding of Anne’s cheeks softened to a smile. She knew that after all she had won the first round and could afford to be generous. Tactfully, she tried to hide her triumph. “Would you then have me come back as before— as the Queen’s maid-of-honour?” she asked.

“I would sooner it were as the King’s,” grinned Henry ruefully.

But Anne shook her head. “That would be dishonour,” she said primly.

He stood looking at her, as if determining something within himself. “You speak truth. You are as yet too thin and pale,” he conceded. “I will tell Lady Boleyn to cherish you here awhile and bring you when you are ready to come.”

“You are generous, sir,” she admitted, curtsying to the floor. “I realize that your Grace could command me.”

He tweaked her cheek kindly as she rose. “And what should I gain by it, my pretty Nan? A frown from those black eyes of yours, a sulky answer from lips made for passion?” He made no further attempt to touch her. “Believe me, I would rather take away from this pleasant room the recollection of one spontaneous laugh, your glance enjoined with mine. Of one verse read, so you have in some measure enjoyed my company. And so I will stalk you patiently,” he promised, moving towards the door, “in order to catch you the more securely.”

But there was that spark of coquetry in Anne which would not suffer her to leave well alone. “Are you so sure that you
will
catch me?” she asked, challenging him with that devastating sideways glance from beneath her lowered lashes.

He stood, enslaved, with the arras already lifted in his hand. He made a gorgeous figure in the morning sunlight. He was King of England and, of all the lovely women who preened themselves at his approach, he had sought her out.

But it was neither his gorgeousness nor the signal honour shown her which moved Anne. It was something about the man himself. A warmth and vitality that made her wonder why so short a time ago, as an inexperienced girl, she had thought him middle-aged. Something which, in spite of her angry resentment, made her think how exciting it might be to be loved by him, a momentary thought for which she held herself in swift contempt.

“Do I usually let my quarry escape me?” he countered boastfully. “Ask those who hunt with me!”

And his self-confident laughter seemed to enrich the walls of Hever as he let the arras drop behind him and encountered Sir Thomas Boleyn waiting to escort him down the stairs.

It must have taken a deal of courage, Nan’s not answering the King’s first letter,” mused Jocunda, eying the second one as if it were some bargain from the Devil.

“She has plenty of that,” agreed her father complacently.

“More than Mary.”

“And more intelligence, too!” The better to examine the royal missive, Thomas Boleyn swept aside the designs for the Ormonde hatchment with which his table had been strewn; for why concern himself about a mere Irish title now? A year or so ago he would have broken the royal seal as a matter of course and told his daughter how to deal with the contents. But now the King’s continued attentions had put Anne upon a different footing, and there were moments when Sir Thomas was secretly afraid of her sharp tongue. She was so temperamental and yet so clear thinking—so much more imperious than Mary. “Here, take the letter to her, good wife,” he ordered.

“It is past believing,” complained the lady of Hever, taking it reluctantly. “Messengers from the Palace every few days. Freshly killed buck, supposed to fatten her, but more to show off the Tudor’s skill. And ‘Cherish her, dear Lady Boleyn’, he tells me—as though I need
his
orders to look after mine own!”

“Jocunda! I would have you remember it is the King you speak of.”

“And how I would it were not! If only it were young Wyatt or some other honest lover who could marry her! I’ve a mind to burn the temptation here and now before it burns the wench’s body in hell.”

Her husband’s face reddened uncomfortably. “It is different, I tell you, with a King!”

But Jocunda realized what honest love had done to beautify Anne’s nature, and how—thwarted, turned back upon itself—it might sour her. “‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ it says,” she quoted at him from the only book she knew. “But nothing, as far as I know, about cohabiting with kings.” And was told, for her pains, that such foolish talk came of the iniquitous Lutheran idea of letting women read the Scriptures for themselves.

So there was nothing for it but to take the letter to her stepdaughter; and because Jocunda never poked or pried, Anne pulled her down beside her on the oak chest where she sat, and read it aloud.

“To my mistress,”
Henry had begun romantically.
“As the time seems very long since I heard from you, or concerning your health, the great love I have for you has constrained me to send this.”

“The great love,” murmured Jocunda, half-awed in spite of herself that such words should come from Westminster to Hever.

“If so be that he knows what a great love is,” scoffed Anne. “
‘Since my last parting with you, I have been told that you have entirely changed the mind in which I left you, and that you neither mean to come to Court with your mother, nor any other way.’
“

“It is true, Nan, that we have made every possible delay and excuse.”

“
‘Which report, if true, I cannot but marvel at,’
“ went on Anne, “
‘being persuaded in my own mind that I have never committed any offence against you.’
Dear God, was it no offence to destroy my life’s happiness?”

“Here, let me finish it,” offered Jocunda, seeing the tears starting to the girl’s eyes. And stretching out an exasperated hand she skimmed it over, stressing the more important parts. “
‘It seems hard, in return for the great love I bear you—
’ You see, Nan, he says it again
!— to be kept at a distance from the presence of the woman in the world I value the most. Consider, my mistress, how greatly your absence afflicts me. I hope it is not your will that it should be so; but if I heard for certain that you yourself desired it, I could but mourn my ill fortune, and strive by degrees to abate my folly.’
“ Jocunda hurried through the formal phrases of salutation. “
‘Written by the hand of your entire servant, H.R.’
“

The portentous words seemed almost unbelievable in the quiet of the homely, familiar room. “Well, I suppose it is something to have the King of England for one’s servant!” laughed Anne in a strained sort of way, succumbing to a surge of triumphant excitement.

“And his Grace certainly writes a lovely letter, as if he really loves you. I had expected it to be more gross.”

“Gross or fine, this time I shall have to answer it.”

“Your Father hopes that it will wake you from calf-love whimsies to the reality of a splendid future,” reported Jocunda reluctantly.

“It is not the future of which I am thinking, but the past,” answered Anne slowly. “My beautiful past. One short summer of ecstasy and hopes, trodden into the dust like a morning puff ball by his uncaring feet!” She went to the window, but her great dark eyes saw nothing of the familiar view. They were staring back into time, seeing again the sunlit river meadows, the daisy-strewn lawns in the Queen’s garden at Greenwich, the tender smile of her young lover. “How dare the King hope that I shall love him?” she cried. “How dare he presume to think that he can buy my devotion with glittering baubles? In spite of all the humble courtesy of his letter we know what he wants, and how can I give him my body after—after—” The words died in her throat, strangled by a sob. She threw herself down against the cushioned window seat, her head pillowed despairingly in her arms; though even in the wildness of her distress her movements appeared to be guided by a sense of drama.

Jocunda looked down at her pityingly. Having nursed her through delirium, she knew that the girl’s surrender to Percy had been absolute and beyond time’s healing; though never would she betray that accidentally acquired knowledge. “If you keep firm in your refusal to become the King’s mistress, the dear Mother of Christ will help you,” she counselled simply. “Is it not written, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’?”